


The Artisan

by shellcollector



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Incidental gruesome details from the Necker be warned, Socialism, Working-class autonomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 19:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7187243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellcollector/pseuds/shellcollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the autumn of 1830, Les Amis are frayed and tired. But Enjolras is building new alliances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Artisan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anacrea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anacrea/gifts).



> The prompt asked for "Something involving the reality of political activity during the period". I hope this suits.
> 
> If this is anyone's first encounter with printer Enjolras, and they have questions, [this](http://pilferingapples.tumblr.com/post/142943329351/a-printers-only-son-and-wealthy-an-alternate) may provide some context.

It was still only September, but as the equinox approached the days were shortening ever more quickly. As they walked back to Enjolras’ one grey evening Combeferre wondered where the daylight had gone. Somehow the summer had shrunk away to nothing without his even noticing, and here they were, the air already chilled and full of smuts from burning charcoal, walking beneath a low sky, living under another king.

“We can finish it off this evening,” said Enjolras, though they’d been walking in silence. “Then I’ll set it tomorrow, if we don’t get any big jobs at the last minute.”

“Doesn't your uncle ever point out that Rome wasn’t built in a day?” Combeferre asked, sounding decidedly more resentful than he ought.

“If he did,” said Enjolras, “they’d tell him a mechanical press can turn around a thousand pages in an hour, which puts Rome's architects to shame.”

Combeferre knew that his complaint was not reasonable; but too often, these days, Enjolras was staying late for work that wasn’t even secret. Combeferre couldn’t begrudge the shop’s success, especially after such a hard year, but he was worried by how tired Enjolras looked lately.

“Does he mean to get one?” he asked.

He’d seen only diagrams of the great steam presses; they had a solemn and oppressive beauty, like the mechanised cotton looms. _I could be the instrument of your freedom_ , they seemed to sing, _but I have come instead to enslave you._

“I don’t think so,” said Enjolras, pensively. “Not yet, at least. He’s too loyal, and he knows what it would mean. Besides, it’s a huge expense. It’ll happen, though. That's a momentum one can't deny, an omnibus that never halts. Either you jump onto it or you fall under its wheels. Sometimes I look around the workshop, though, and think about how I’ve spent my whole life learning a craft that’ll soon be obsolete.”

“Me too, I suppose,” said Combeferre. “I’m convinced more than half the techniques we use are incorrect. Most of the books I’ll be examined on seem destined for the scrapheap, but if I’m not careful I’ll end up there with them.”

Enjolras smiled and shook his head. “No. You’ll always be in the vanguard.”

“And you not?” Combeferre was smiling too, but Enjolras shook his head again, suddenly solemn.

“I’m a printer,” he said, simply. “Not an engineer.”

Combeferre moved closer and took his arm. They passed the rest of the walk home without talking.

 

“Listen, I’m telling you, I feel it _in my soul_ , in the core of my being, in my —”

“No, but look, let me explain. See, the core of your being is the digestion, and what you are feeling is repeated contractions —”

“I would appreciate it _very much_ if you _stopped interrupting me._ ”

“But see, I’m trying to explain myself! If you’d just —”

Combeferre wondered which of Prouvaire and Joly would be the first to tears. Prouvaire was redder in the face, but Joly’s voice was more strained, and Bossuet, joking a little too loudly with Bahorel, kept glancing over in their direction. Meanwhile Courfeyrac and Feuilly, conversing about international events and in concordance on every point, seemed nonetheless to have convinced themselves that they disagreed. Grantaire, too drunk for amity, was flitting from one group to the other, stirring the discord to greater heights.

It was not an unfamiliar scene, by now; they’d all been out of sorts since July. The frequency and severity of Joly’s self-diagnosed illnesses had increased quite dramatically; he had been Very Ill some three or four times and Combeferre had been obliged to summon all his patience when called on for a second opinion. Bossuet, meanwhile, was shedding posessions at an alarming rate; he had lost six hats already and two waistcoats — the latter, somehow, while retaining his threadbare coat, which frankly could do with being lost — and had left copies of the key to Joly’s rooms in various locations across Paris. Jehan was melancholy and distant, and wept at the slightest provocation; Courfeyrac was short-tempered and almost managed to be disagreeable, although he was too much himself to make it all the way there. Bahorel had not been seen unbruised or unbloodied in more than six weeks, and had even broken a wrist under circumstances he was reluctant to disclose. And Feuilly was tense with a quiet fury, could not talk about anything but betrayal, the betrayal of Poland, of Scotland, of Mexico, not mentioning the recent betrayal by name but somehow naming it with every word.

Grantaire, of all of them, surely had the least right to be upset; but, when trying to understand him, Combeferre kept being reminded of his uncle’s parrot. That bird, whenever there was sorrow in the house, would become distressed and fly at all and sundry with beak and claws. It did not matter that to the parrot that it did not understand the source of the bad feeling. If anything, the confusion added to its distress.

And then there was Enjolras, sitting quietly in the corner, who was only tired. Probably not even that to the casual observer, who would have been taken in by the fact that his brow was still smooth and his eyes clear and unshadowed. But Combeferre had been trained to observe symptoms and notice patterns, had followed Broussais around the Val de Grâce taking pulses and feeling glands. He still remembered the first startling instant when he had looked at a man, lying restless and yellow on a hospital mattress, and known at once that he would die within the week.

Well, Enjolras was not dying, thank goodness. He was only a little redder than usual about the eyelids, his lips a little more tightly pressed together, his cheeks a subtler shade of pink. His eyes seemed paler. There was a brittleness about him, clear and hard, like glass.

Jehan’s voice was loud. “…not _listening._ The passions could be considered, perhaps, the resonance of the body, but the vibrations themselves take place within the realm of the spiritual. Sadness is a note played on the strings of the heart.”

Combeferre sighed, and went back to his book. The text seemed to dance around before his eyes. Then, a warm hand on his back.

It was Enjolras, of course.

“Aren’t you sleeping well?” he asked.

“Not really,” Combeferre admitted.

Enjolras sat beside him, leaned against his shoulder.

“We’re still missing about half a dozen men,” said Combeferre.

“Mm-hm.” Enjolras’ voice was a hum, close to his neck.

“I don’t believe they’ll return. I think they’re satisfied with — with _this_.”

“Probably.”

“You don’t seem bothered.”

Enjolras seemed to pause for a few seconds. Then he said, “I’ll mourn those who fell, but not those who deserted us. There are others who’ll take their place.”

 

Enjolras was meeting him at the gates of the hospital. That meant he needed to wait there until Enjolras came. But Enjolras was late and Combeferre badly wanted to leave. He paced. He wanted to read, but reading seemed impossible. Finally he took a stub of pencil out of his coat pocket and began to write on the back of a scrap of paper, leaning against the Necker’s pockmarked wall.

_She came in starving, with a dead child held to her breast._

_We did not have enough beds and so we put the three small sisters in one. In all three, the stomach muscles had weakened such that the internal organs began to protrude through the abdominal wall, giving an impression of fullness that was entirely misleading. A deficiency of fresh food had caused the gums to bleed and an old injury on the eldest sister’s leg to reopen._

_He had a tumour the size of a fist growing from his jaw. The pain must have been overwhelming but he had kept working until two days ago, when he fainted at his workstation and lost his position. He begged us to return him to health so that he could begin to search for another job. His mother depends on him —_

A gentle touch between the shoulderblades. “I’m sorry,” said Enjolras, his voice soft. “I didn’t think I’d be this late. I needed to be absolutely certain I wasn’t noticed. We’re meeting someone new.”

Combeferre put the paper and pencil back into his pockets. He’d assemble his reflections later, perhaps, give them a narrative and a message, pull out headlines and sign it cryptically. Then Enjolras would set the type and run off copies in one of his precious free evenings, and they’d take them down to the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, push one at a time on passersby and friendly faces, give a bundle or two to a gamin to strew across the city like a bird spreading seed, along with a handful of coins to sweeten the deal, like the berries in which the seeds were hidden. But when he closed his eyes he kept seeing the dead baby, shrunken and cold in a dirty blanket, and the mother’s wild eyes when they tried to take it from her. There would always be a part of that which could not be made to point to anything, because it could not be undone.

As he put away the folded paper in his left breast pocket, his fingers had found another, which he’d placed there earlier. He pulled it out.

“I wanted to ask you about this,” he said to Enjolras, who had taken his arm. “Do you know anything about it?”

Enjolras took the paper amiably. His fingers were stained from a day at the press. He unfolded it.

The header along the top had been typeset very nicely by a skilled hand. “THE ARTISAN,” it read. “A working-class newspaper.”

“I have read the prospectus,” said Combeferre, “and the authors sound like they might be friends of ours.”

“Mm-hm.”

“In fact, they seem to be a group of printers, from what I can make out. I thought perhaps you would have run into them.”

“Perhaps.”

“Enjolras, is there a reason why you are keeping up this pretence, or are you simply enjoying yourself?”

“Well, it _is_ rather amusing.”

Combeferre reached under his spectacles to rub at his eyes, but he was smiling.

“But also, as you’ve probably realised, if I had been involved in this, I wouldn’t have been alone. I have oaths to keep, and they mean a great deal to me.”

Did that hurt? Combeferre poked at it a few times, as he might at a swollen limb or a distended stomach. A little, he decided.

“You can trust me,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady nonetheless.

Enjolras stopped in the street and turned to face Combeferre head-on. His hair was, Combeferre realised, bundled awkwardly underneath a hat - not a paper printer’s cap, but a worker’s cloth one. Had he borrowed it from Feuilly? He must have been serious about being recognised.

“I trust you,” said Enjolras, and without the hair rounding out his face and making it glow Combeferre could see that he was thinner, looking less like a cherub and more like a solemn angel. “I always trust you,” Enjolras repeated. “But the others don’t want anyone else involved, not at present. I can’t force a different decision on them, that’s not how we’re doing this.”

“We could help,” said Combeferre, and it came out sounding more plaintive than he’d intended. He tried again. “I mean, the Amis could help. With distribution. With - a lot of things.”

“And you — we — will, I’m sure of it.” said Enjolras. “Only — that needs to come later. It’s important that this should happen without such help, at the beginning. You understand, don’t you?”

And Combeferre did, having read and reread the prospectus several times, unsettled by hearing such a familiar voice in it, like seeing a friend from back home while walking the streets of a strange and distant city. _We have had newspapers for the use of the workers,_ it read, _but they spoke to us in a foreign tongue, for they were made by men who did not understand any of our needs._

Of course he understood.

 

The person they were meeting turned out to be a joiner.

“I won’t ask your name,” said Enjolras. “But I’ll give you ours. Although you probably already know who I am.”

The joiner nodded. His face was open, friendly with a cast of nervousness. “Who’s he?”

“This is a dear friend, Combeferre. He’s a doctor.”

“I’m a student,” Combeferre corrected.

The joiner nodded again.

“If you’re to be a mutual aid society,” said Enjolras, “it’ll be useful to have a doctor on call. He can assist if anything should take an unexpected turn. He’s only a student, so there are some operations he can’t perform, but he can always give advice.”

The joiner’s eyes were wide. He was young, despite the lines in his face. Younger than either of them.

“We mean to ask the king for assistance,” said the joiner. Combeferre tried to disguise his start of surprise. “Our wages have been falling steadily for weeks. Well, it was the people put him on that throne. He’d be nothing without us. So, we’ll down tools and make for the palace. It’s time to make him work for what he’s been given.”

Enjolras seemed unruffled. He must have been prepared for this. “Well,” he said, sounding almost amused. “I’m sure Combeferre is dying to give you his medical opinion, and I’m sure you don’t want it. So how about we leave things at that. Just, you know how to get in touch in case of accidents. And remember, we’re an educational society; if you need any reading materials, or have any youngsters who want to learn, we’ll be happy to help.”

The joiner extended a hand. “Pleased to have met you,” he said. “I hope we’ll be in touch with some good news very soon.”

“Me too, my friend,” said Enjolras, warmly.

“Good luck,” said Combeferre, shaking the man’s hand. It was all he could think to say.

 

“You might have warned me,” said Combeferre, when they had arrived at Enjolras’ room.

“Oh, well,” said Enjolras, pulling off the cap with evident relief and sitting down on the edge of the bed, leaving the armchair for Combeferre. “I wasn’t quite sure what their plans were until just now.”

“But you had some idea.”

“Perhaps.” There was the ghost of a smile on Enjolras’ face.

“They’re going to fail, Enjolras.”

“Yes,” said Enjolras, quite calmly. “They certainly are.”

“And you let them have our names regardless?”

“Oh, I don’t think they’ll be arrested, not unless they do something very foolish, and these men aren’t fools. There may be certain gaps in their understanding, but they learn quickly. The ones who didn’t won’t have made it through the apprenticeship, at least not with all their limbs.”

Combeferre winced, thinking of the amputation he’d attended only last week. The blood and noise of it were still bright in his memory, a buzzing spot of light burned into his eye.

“I’m sorry,” said Enjolras, noticing his discomfort. “I know — the hospital’s difficult right now, isn’t it? I thought it would be easier on you, with time, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.”

Combeferre didn’t know how to reply. He rubbed at his eyes. “It’s hard to —”

He stopped, thinking again of the small stiff bundle, how they’d — he’d — peeled the woman’s fingers away from it, one by one. “There are more and more,” he said. “That’s all. More every week.”

Enjolras gave a quick nod, the kind that meant he knew more talk would not improve the situation.

“I’ve identified about half a dozen new groups like that one, already,” he said. “Maybe more. I’m going to make contact, although we’ll have to keep a low profile — if it gets out that they’ve any ties to us then they really will be arrested.”

“That’s quite a risk,” said Combeferre.

“It is. But when they fail, because they’ll certainly fail with this approach, I want them to know where to go next. I want them to come straight to us. He’s not wrong about one thing — it was workers’ hands and workers’ bodies that brought down the walls this summer. And it wasn’t the workers who betrayed the cause, either. All over France, there are men just starting to understand how powerful they are. They might be afraid, sometimes, they might be scattered, they might not always see with perfect clarity, but they’re where our strength lies.”

Combeferre couldn’t help but smile. The day’s last light light, falling through the window, was catching on Enjolras’ hair, which under the hat’s influence had disarranged itself into a tangled cloud of gold. His face was still tired, fragile and angular and, Combeferre realised, much older than it had been in the spring.

“You’ve had a long day,” said Enjolras — giving the startling impression that he had been thinking the exact same thing about Combeferre.

“You need to sleep more,” Combeferre said. “That’s my medical advice, if you’re wondering. And eat more. Please, Enjolras.”

“Well,” said Enjolras brightly. “Why don’t we tackle the second problem first? My aunt makes an excellent soup and if you’ll agree to join me, I’ll go and beg two bowls off her. You know how she likes you; with any luck we may get a piece of cheese.”

“All right,” said Combeferre, with a sigh. “I’m sure you’ve out-manoeuvred me somehow, but I consent.”

 

After dinner Enjolras kicked his stockinged feet up onto the bed and said, “Tell me what you’ve been reading.”

It was a routine they had, or, perhaps, an agreement; whenever Enjolras asked, Combeferre would talk about what he’d learned most recently. Mostly from books, but he had recounted lectures too, ones Enjolras couldn’t attend since he was needed in the shop. He was quite sure Enjolras was not at all interested in entomology, or English novels, or the synthesis of urea; even more sure that Enjolras’ reading on the topic of political science was both wider and more precisely focused than his own. But it was a ritual that brought them together, calmed them, and carried unexpected joys. Enjolras was delighted, it turned out, to hear about flying balloons and the mechanism of a steam locomotive. He grew still and attentive when Combeferre talked about electric currents, about the actions of magnets, about the gravitational dance of the stars. And since Combeferre liked to share whatever he found, he was always happy when Enjolras asked him to.

“I’ve been reading Doherty,” he said. “He’s trying to bring all the English workers together in a single union.”

Enjolras sank comfortably down on the bed. “Yes,” he agreed. “Feuilly’s been talking to me about that.”

“I think — listen, Enjolras, I suppose this bears on your new workers’ associations, as well. A general union can hold a general strike. The most powerful weapon we have might be neither the gun nor the sword, but the power of refusal. If all the nation’s workers were to lay down their tools, the country would be theirs within the week.”

“Without bloodshed?”

“Perhaps. I mean —” he hesitated; he knew his mind could fill in gaps with its own longing. “perhaps not. I don’t know. The anti-guild laws are against it; it would be difficult to organise in secret. There would be attempts to crush any such movement through force, and there would always be some prepared to break ranks. But it’s possible. I can imagine it, and a thing that can be imagined can be realised. We could take power but take no lives, even in our own defence.”

Perhaps it was the twilight, or the fact that he was quite clearly struggling to stay awake, but Enjolras looked suddenly smaller. “That would really be something,” he murmured, almost to himself, and then, more unambiguously aloud, “I’d like to believe that possible. If all we needed were men, just men, not soldiers —”

“Imagine,” said Combeferre — he was surprising himself with the depth of emotion this aroused in him — “just imagine, if one could bring about a world of unity through unity itself, through brotherhood and friendship.”

Enjolras was smiling, his eyes half closed. “I wish I could give you that,” he said.

He curled onto his side, towards the wall.

“I think a lot,” he said, quietly, “about how I’ve never known any of you in peacetime. Of course, you’re more than soldiers, all of you, and I know some of you have made your own little gardens — Joly and Bossuet, they’ve a garden, and Prouvaire’s poems are a garden, and your moths and chemicals are a garden, little walled-off bits of peace, all of them — but I’ve never seen any of you living as civilians. I imagine it like a great space opening up, like walking under a wide sky.”

“I’d like to walk there with you.”

“You know, it’s a strange thing,” said Enjolras, now almost too quiet for Combeferre to hear, “but I don’t find it very easy to picture myself in such a landscape. I suppose I’ve never known myself in peacetime, either. I imagine there must have been a time when I thought I might be something else — something other than this, I mean. But I can’t remember it.”

“Well, there’ll be time,” said Combeferre, fighting back some deep sadness he could not name.

“Perhaps there will,” said Enjolras, sleepily.

Combeferre watched Enjolras fall asleep and the moon rise through the window. He read through _The Artisan_ once more in the silvered light:

_Cease now, noble bourgeois, to turn us away from your breast, for we too are men, and not machines. Our industry, which you have exploited for such a long time, belongs rightfully to us; and the light of education, the blood we have spilled for liberty, have given us the means and the right to liberate ourselves forever from the servitude in which you hold us._

_Let not our movement for the equality of the working class frighten you, for we say to you, with Volney: “You are saved; for after we are enlightened, we will not abuse our power; we want only our rights. We have grudges, but we will forget them. We were slaves, and we could be tyrants; but we want only to be free, and we are.”_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "L'Artisan: Un journal de la classe ouvrière" was a real thing! Its prospectus is published in the anthology ['La parole ouvrière'](http://www.lafabrique.fr/catalogue.php?idArt=243&idMot=63), which is the source for the extracts here. (The embedded quotation, incidentally, is from "Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires", published in 1791 by the Count Constantin de Volney.) The translation, with all its faults, is mine.
> 
> John Doherty's 'National Association for the Protection of Labour' peaked at around 100,000 members, but collapsed in mid-1832.
> 
> The hope and the frustration of 1830 kicked off a wave of labour organisation and striking in France, paralleling that which was taking place across Europe. Despite the fact that 'trade unions' as such were banned, French workers were rather resourceful in circumventing the law, and it's notable that in 1880, the newly-legalised unions had a remarkable degree of continuity with the 18th century guild-like organisations that had existed before the ban.


End file.
